Past Award Recipients: Illinois Innovation Prize & Fiddler Innovation Fellowship
Past Award Recipients and Finalists
The Illinois Innovation Award (IIA) for $20,000 is awarded annually to an innovative student working towards solving global and societal challenges with the potential for a significant positive impact on the world. The Fiddler Innovation Fellowship for $10,000 is now also awarded in conjunction with the Illinois Innovation Award (this combined effort began in 2019). This award supports innovations that address cultural or global challenges that incorporate creativity, the arts/design, and technology into interdisciplinary solutions.
2024 Illinois Innovation Award Recipient - Alejandra Zeballos
Alejandra Zeballos is developing next-generation therapies for neurodegenerative disorders using CRISPR-based technologies, the molecular scissors that enable genome editing. Her research focuses on creating a gene therapy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal motor neuron disorder. Zeballos has developed a single-dose therapeutic strategy to mitigate the pathology of toxic protein aggregates that arise in 97% of ALS cases. More specifically, she used RNA-targeting CRISPR effector proteins, a programmable class of gene silencing agents, to target a disease-modifier of toxicity in ALS. Her technology improved motor function, extended survival, and reduced the severity of numerous neuropathological hallmarks in a mouse model of ALS. Her work demonstrates that CRISPR-based technologies hold promise for neurologic diseases, including ALS.
2024 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Recipient - Nellie Haug
Nellie Haug is a student at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, co-founded Cervicare. Cervicare is developing a novel point-of-care test to circumvent the need for conventional pap testing to increase accessibility to this vital screening procedure, particularly in underserved communities. The system is designed to be less invasive, more cost-effective, and less time-intensive than conventional pap tests.
“I am deeply honored to be the recipient of the Fiddler Innovation Fellowship this year for my continued efforts at the intersection of engineering and medicine. This award holds special significance considering the remarkable projects at CI MED and across the campus. Over the past few years, my academic and extracurricular pursuits have laid the groundwork for the success of Cervicare, a venture aimed at revolutionizing cervical cancer screening. With a focus on providing an innovative at-home self-collection system, Cervicare strives to enhance access to vital gynecologic screenings for all women,” Haug said.
2023 Illinois Innovation Award Recipient - Janet Sorrells
2023 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Recipient - Bara Sadaah
2023 Finalists
Christian Guerrero-Juarez and Anant Naik
2022 Illinois Innovation Award Recipient - Guanhua Xun
2022 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Recipient - Gabe Tavas
2022 Finalists
2021 Illinois Innovation Award Winner - Maha Alafeef
2021 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Winner - Ariana Barreau
2021 Finalists
Homa Khosravian, Gabriel Price, Shonit Sharma
2020 Illinois Innovation Award Winner - Ananya Tiwari
2020 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Winner - Anayna Cleetus
Ananya Cleetus, one of the IIA finalists, was recognized for receiving the Fiddler Innovation Fellowship. Ananya is the founder of Anemone, a mental health crisis app that aims to destigmatize mental illness. The app allows users to create a customized crisis plan, and share it with friends, family, first responders, and mental health professionals. Mental health illness is a growing crisis, especially among youth in the U.S. One in five Americans suffer from a mental illness and the U.S. has around 1.4 million annual suicide attempts (compared to an annual 1.5 million heart attacks). Channeling her own struggles into a positive tool for others to use, Ananya aspires to be on the front lines of mental health crisis, and work on the next big innovation in the field. She says, “While many people grow up learning about CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, or even ‘stop, drop and roll’, they typically are not given any education about mental health at all. Anemone aims to bridge this education gap and provide valuable resources.” Ananya received $10,000 as the recipient of the Fiddler Innovation Fellowship. The Fiddler Innovation Fellowship is part of an endowment from Jerry Fiddler and Melissa Alden to the University of Illinois in support of the Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media (eDream) Institute, which is based at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).2020 Finalists
2019 Illinois Innovation Award Winner - Siddharth Krishnan
Siddharth Krishnan is a PhD candidate in Materials Science and Engineering. He has developed a noninvasive, wearable shunt failure monitor for patients with hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus affects approximately one million Americans in every stage of life and is the most common reason for brain surgeries in children. The shunt failure monitor has the potential to bring down the costs associated with expensive, inaccurate, and painful diagnostic testing. Learn more about Siddharth and his startup Rhaeos, Inc.
2019 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship Winner - Jewel Ifeguni
Jewel Ifeguni has a bachelors degree in Computer Science and is founder and CEO of YouMatter Studios, a virtual reality media startup focused on diversity and inclusion in media. YouMatter Studios has created How We Got Here, a docuseries that is forefronting Black Voices and shifting the nation’s conversation around allyship.
2019 Finalists
Shayne Chammavanijakul, Jewel Ifeguni, Benjamin Khachaturian, Amaury Saulsberry
2018 Illinois Innovation Award Winner - Kathleen Hu
Kathleen Hu is a senior in Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering and founder of Dibbs. Dibbs is a technology platform and organization to connect excess food at grocery stores to local food pantries. Dibbs is on a mission to reduce food waste while fighting hunger.
2018 Finalists
Jamila Hedhli, Rohit Kalyanpur, Hiba Shahid, Lucas Smith, Benjamin Thompson
2017 Winner - Lucas Frye
Lucas Frye is an MBA candidate in the College of Business and co-founder and CEO of Amber Agriculture, a startup focused on automating grain management. Using IoT-enabled wireless sensors and cloud analytics, their technology enables farmers to capture the highest possible price for their crops. Lucas utilized his farm background and Bachelor of Science in Agricultural and Consumer Economics along with his co-founder’s engineering skills to win the 2016 Cozad New Venture Competition. Since then, Amber Agriculture has taken part in the iVenture Accelerator and was named the Best Startup at the Consumer Electronics Show by Engadget. While at Illinois Lucas was the President of the College of ACES Council, co-director of the University of Illinois Student Alumni Ambassadors, winner of the Warren K. Wessels Achievement Award to the most outstanding senior in the college of ACES, Senior 100 Honorary: Top 100 Campus Seniors based on University of Illinois Leadership and Loyalty, and was a student trustee on the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.
2017 Finalists
Bilge Acun, Olaoluwapo Ajala, Daniel Gardner
2016 Winner - Aadeel Akhtar
Aadeel Akhtar is a Neuroscience Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Illinois, currently enrolled in the College of Medicine. He graduated from Loyola University Chicago, Magna cum laude, with a B.S. in biology and a M.S. in computer science in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Aadeel is also the CEO and Co-founder of PSYONIC, a startup developing highly advanced, low-cost prosthetic hands – the first with sensory feedback -- to those who need them around the world. PSYONIC took home the 1st place prize in the 2015 Cozad New Venture Competition before participating in the iVenture Accelerator in the summer of 2015. His passion for helping amputees comes from a trip to Pakistan in the summer of 1994 when he met a girl his age missing her right leg. The girl was using a tree branch as a crutch, and Aadeel could not understand how two people with the same ethnic background could have such vastly different qualities of life. He then made it his mission to help amputees, such as the girl he met in Pakistan as a child, improve their quality of life.
2016 Finalists
2015 Winner - Ritu Raman
Ritu Raman, PhD Candidate in Mechanical Science and Engineering was announced as the 2015 winner and awarded with $15,000. Ritu is focused on developing and commercializing 3D printing technologies for applications in biomedical engineering. Specifically, Ritu is interested in using 3D printing to manufacture biological building blocks, or BioBlocks. These BioBlocks can harness the innate abilities of biological materials to sense, process, and respond to a variety of dynamic environmental signals in real time. Ritu plans to use experiential learning and empirical discovery as a tool to train the next generation of makers, builders, and inventors.
2015 Finalists
Ahmed Khurshid, Amy Doroff
2014 Winner - Canan Dagdeviren
Canan Dagdeviren, a PhD Candidate in Materials Science and Engineering won the 2014 Illinois Innovation Prize for her research in applications of piezoelectric materials and patterning techniques for unusual electronics with an emphasis on bio-integrated systems, such as bio-sensors, actuators, transducers, and mechanical energy harvestors in flexible/strechtable forms.
2014 Finalists
Analisa Russo, Paul Froeter, Adam Tilton, Peter Fiflis, James Pikul
2013 Inaugural Illinois Innovation Prize Winners - Rajinder Sodhi & Brett Jones
Rajinder Sodhi’s invention, AIREAL, allows users to feel physical forces in the air without requiring any instrumentation of the user. This technology enables new interactive experiences, such as movies and games that can deliver physical forces to a viewer and objects in their environment. Other applications include assistive technologies for visually-impaired users. Rajinder's research lies at the intersection of computer vision and human computer interaction and he focuses on creating new Augmented Reality experiences that blurs the line between our physical and virtual worlds.
Brett Jones strives to merge physical and virtual worlds. His current project, IllumiRoom, augments the area surrounding a television screen with projected visualizations to enhance the traditional living room entertainment experience. IllumiRoom uses a Kinect and a projector to blur the lines between on-screen content and the environment. Brett’s research makes content creation for this type of projection mapping cheaper and easier, turning it into a new creative medium that can be used to bring magical experiences to advertising, hands-on education, theater, gaming and in-home computing.
2013 Winner - Eduardo Torrealba
Eduardo Torrealba, a graduate student in Mechanical Science and Engineering, created his company Oso Technologies after a simple search to keep household plants alive. His first product, Plant Link, monitors the moisture needs of specific plants and can deliver water on an as-needed basis using smart valves. Torrealba is the 2013 winner of the Lemelson-MIT Illinois Student Prize.
2013 Finalists
Eleni Antoniadou, Michael McCarty, Arnab Mukherjee, Lucas Smith, Brett Walker
2012 Winner - Kevin Karsch
Kevin Karsch, a doctoral student in computer science, has helped develop a technique for inserting objects and special effects into photos and videos without taking physical measurements of the scene. The technique can be performed by novices in a few minutes. Karsch is the 2012 winner of the Lemelson-MIT Illinois Student Prize.
2012 Finalists
Sriram Chandrasekaran, James Langer, Pradeep S. Shenoy, Muhammed Fazeel
2011 Winner - Scott Daigle
Scott Diagle is working on IntelliWheels, a new product that replaces manual wheelchair wheels and adds automatic gear shifting to reduce the amount of effort required to push the chair. Daigle is the 2011 winner of the Lemelson-MIT Illinois Student Prize.
2011 Finalists
Zeba Parkar, Colin Lake
2010 Winner - Jonathan Naber
Jonathan Naber, guided by his passion for helping those less fortunate, has developed an affordable prosthetic arm for people in underdeveloped countries with the help of his team, Illini Prosthetic Technologies. Putting aside his initial focus to make a state-of-the-art prosthetic arm with electronic components, Jonathan has created an arm from off the shelf materials that is extremely functional, durable and easily manufactured. Naber is the 2010 winner of the Lemelson-MIT Illinois Student Prize.
2010 Finalists
Kira Barton, Stephen Diebold, Scott Daigle
2009 Winner - John Wright
John Wright has developed new mathematical tools that drastically improve the accuracy of facial recognition systems such as those used at Boston’s Logan airport, the 2001 Superbowl, and by the Tampa, Florida police department. Wright is the 2009 winner of the Lemelson-MIT Illinois Student Prize.
2009 Finalists
Martin Page, Jang-Ung Park, Robert Shepherd, Adam Steele, Murali Venkatesan, Ben Blaiszik, Han Wui
2008 Winner - Patrick Walsh
Patrick Walsh is working towards changing the way 1.6 billion people light their homes. Patrick’s solar-powered LED lamps are a brighter, healthier, longer-lasting, and less expensive lighting option for people with unreliable electricity. Walsh is the 2008 winner of the Lemelson-MIT Illinois Student Prize.
2008 Finalists
Chris Field, Yun Fu, Shravan Gaonkar, Stephen Diebold
2007 Winner - Michael Callahan
Michael Callahan hopes to assist individuals without the use of speech and mobility to communicate through the application of neuroscience. Callahan is the 2007 winner of the Lemelson-MIT Illinois Student Prize.
2007 Finalists
Shao Liu, Matthew Meitl, Zheng Ni, Craig Robinson, Kumara Sastry, Bhezad Sharif, Renata Sheppard